Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture . She studies Black historical excellence within educational communities with goals of reframing curriculum and instruction today. Her book Cultivating Genius is her contribution to reframing how we should be treating black students. It’s a great read.
Black History 365 | # 157 Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington was one of the most powerful African Americans at the turn of the twentieth century. Born a slave in Hale's Ford, Virginia, the son of a white man who did not acknowledge him and a slave woman named Jane (Burroughs) who later married a fellow slave, Booker T. Washington became a leader in black education, and a strong influence as a racial representative in national politics. He founded Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (Now Tuskegee University) in 1881 and the National Negro Business League two decades later. Washington advised Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. His infamous conflicts with Black leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois over segregation caused a stir, but today, he is remembered as the most influential African American speaker of his time. In his 1900 autobiography, Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington wrote: "I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression on me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise." Dr. John Henrik Clarke has a critique on Booker T. Washington, essentially stating that Booker T. Washington was a product of white philanthropy. In other words he was a chosen leader for black people. But what is notable is that Washington knew he was gonna get got, BUT more importantly he was going to, and got his more than he got got doe. This is the insidious nature of the situation Booker T. Washington was dealt with. If you have a moment listen to Dr. Clarke’s critique on Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise Speech of 1895.
Black History 365 | # 156 Dr. Audrey Smedley
Audrey Smedley, one of the nation’s first African American women anthropologists, after completing her education in Detroit Public Schools, Audrey attended the University of Michigan on a scholarship. She intended to study law and dreamed of working for the United Nations. In 1954, Smedley earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in the history, letters, and law program and a Master of Arts in anthropology with a concentration in history in 1957 from the University of Michigan. From 1959 to 1961, she investigated the social and economic organization of the Birom ethnic group of Northern Nigeria to complete her dissertation in late 1966. Smedley is best known for her studies of the history of “race,” a concept that she argues emerged in the Americas to justify enslavement and genocide against Africans. She argued that folk culture popularized race while science gave it authority in her book Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview (1993). She is the co-founder of the Museum of Afro-American History in Detroit (now the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History). Much respect to the pioneering social anthropologist who peacefully passed away at her home in Beltsville, Maryland, on October 14, 2020, 16 days before her ninetieth birthday. Thank you for your contributions. Rest in peace.
